24 September 2009

Drug prohibition can be traced back to the moral reformers of the late
19th and early 20th centuries, mainly comprised of Methodist,
Progressive women from the Northeast. As the movement grew, the
crusaders looked to California and the South to institute criminal drug
laws. This primarily happened, as we shall see, because of racism and
moralists. Further, we must understand that the War on Drugs has been a
miserable failure. We must decide what type of society we want . Are
our civil liberties sacrosanct or should we exchange some liberty in
order to continue to fight a war that was lost long ago? What can we
learn from other countries? How are we jeopardising our national
security and creating instability elsewhere? Do we want to cede to the
government the right to tell adults what they should be allowed to put
in their bodies?

If you look at coroner and emergency room
records, along with police blotters, from the turn of the 20th century,
you will discover that the percentage of the population addicted to
illegal drugs was 1.3%. The same percentage has continued since our
first national foray into prohibition with the passage of The 1913
Poison Act Amendments. This legislation was constitutionally dubious.
As an aside, you will recall that we had to amend the Constitution to
ban alcohol, but the same did not occur with regard to drugs.

Prior
to 1913, there were only two real types of addicts. The first were the
Northern veterans from the Civil War, who suffered from the “Soldier’s
Disease.” They had been given morphine for injuries during and after
the war. (Southern soldiers were not likewise afflicted because
morphine was unavailable in large quantities either during or after the
war.) The second group was predominantly comprised of Midwestern,
agrarian housewives, who had become addicted to “tonics” sold by
traveling medicine men and catalog companies. Most of these tonics
contained upwards of 50% cocaine. Probably one of the most effective
pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress that directly affected
public health was The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. It did not ban
drugs; rather, it introduced truth in advertising. Once the public
became aware of the dangerous ingredients in these “medicinal tonics,”
sales plummeted and usage became rare.

If you trace drug legislation back to the beginning, you will find that
criminalisation is rooted in racism.

San Francisco criminalised
opium because of the fear that Asian men would lead white women into
“depravity.” Inspired by anti-Chinese sentiment, California was a
nationally recognized pioneer in the war on drugs. In 1875, it
instituted the first know anti-narcotics law in the US, a San Francisco
ordinance against opium dens. By 1907, seven years before Congress
restricted the sale of narcotics by enacting the Harrison Act, the Board
of Pharmacy had engineered an amendment to California’s poison laws so
as to prohibit the sale of opium, morphine, and cocaine except by a
doctor’s prescription. The Board followed up with an aggressive
enforcement campaign, in which it pioneered many of the modern
techniques of drug enforcement, including undercover agents and
informants, criminalisation of users, and anti-paraphernalia laws,
climaxed by a series of well-publicised raids on pharmacists and Chinese
opium dens.

Cocaine was criminalised because of the fear that
black men would lead white women into "depravity." Terms like the
“Southern Menace” and “N3gro Cocaine Fiends” were bandied about from the
Halls of Congress to the pulpits to women’s groups. Even today, drug
sentencing guidelines have disparate impacts. Minorities are more
likely to use crack cocaine, which carries much longer, and mandatory,
prison terms. Powder cocaine possession can result in no jail time.

Marijuana
was criminalised because of the fear that Hispanic men would lead white
women into depravity. (Yes, the word “depravity” was used with respect
to each drug.) “Marihuana” had begun to penetrate north of the border
from Mexico, carried by immigrants and soldiers during the revolutionary
disorders of 1910-1920. Though hardly known to the American public,
marijuana or “loco-weed” was noticed by the pharmacy journals, which
surmised that it was a relative of Indian hemp or perhaps jimsonweed.
In Mexico, its use was mainly associated with delinquents and soldiers,
lending it a discreditable reputation for madness and violence. With
this in mind, the Board duly added “loco-weed” to its 1913 legislation.

In 1994, the Rand Corporation released a study that showed its cost
seven times as much to incarcerate people on drug possession crimes than
it does to rehabilitate with the former having nearly a 90% recidivism
rate. 80% of all felony convictions have some drug nexus. Half of
those are straight drug crimes. 60-70% of all criminals have drug
problems.

In 1990, murder prosecutions were 50% as successful as
they were in 1980. Resources were focused and spent on drug crimes. We
MUST hold people accountable for their actions’ however, drug
criminalisation has little effect on minimising drug usage. In
countries where drugs are legal, crime is lower than in the US. Alcohol
causes much more violent crime than marijuana. In the same way we
punish the actions of an alcohol intoxicated individual, but not his
alcohol intake, we need to punish the actions of the drug intoxicated
person, but not his usage.

Do we want a nation of drug addicts?
Of course not. We need more education at the local level, which is run
by locals for locals. The Federal government has failed miserably in
fighting this “war.” We have wasted billions without any real success.
Just look at the cost of drugs. The prices haven’t increased. If we
were making a dent in drug quantities, prices would have increased.

In
prison, you can get any drug that you want. Charles Manson had to be
moved from Corcoran State Prison for a time after he was found to be
selling drugs…and, he was in solitary confinement! Also, California
literally has thousands of inmates serving time for just smoking
marijuana while out of parole. They serve their full terms and come out
addicted to more powerful drugs.

Look at the loss of civil liberties since drug criminalisation. The 4th
Amendment has been eroded because of drug criminalisation. At one
point, if you were arrested, the search was limited to those places on
your person within your reach. Supreme Court cases dealing with drugs
have allowed for searches of your trunk, etc., without a warrant.

Prohibition
takes the government and the people out of the equation. We have no
ability to regulate the purity, distribution and usage. We have no
ability to tax. There are many reasons that this is the case. Alcohol
and pharmaceutical companies have fought decriminalisation and
regulation. They have pumped millions, if not more, into the
criminalisation of “illicit” drugs and the “war” on drugs. Marijuana is
a Schedule I drug, which means that it is considered not to have any
medicinal value. Marinol, a synthetic marijuana drug, on the other
hand, is a Schedule II drug, which means that it has pharmacological
value. The latter is prescribed and dispensed at pharmacies.
Possession of the former may result in your incarceration. Why the
disparity? Because it is the Drug Enforcement Agency that decides, not
doctors such as the Surgeon General. The DEA is heavily lobbied by
pharmaceutical companies.

In Holland, they decriminalised
marijuana and hashish decades ago. The country has 50% of the drug
usage that the US does. As one legislator has said, “they have
succeeded in making marijuana boring.” The Netherlands’ biggest problem
is with drug immigration. Nearly 40% of the drug addicts in Amsterdam
are from other countries. They are homeless and those are who you see
on park benches in the middle of the day.

Switzerland has dealt
with heroin addiction far better than any other country in the world.
If an addict goes into the programme, he can get his maintenance drugs,
along with medical and psychological help. The addicts work, pay taxes
and cannot use any other drugs or alcohol. Drug usage has been halved
in the last decade.

In 2001, Portugal legalised all drugs. Distribution is still illegal,
but possession and usage are not. Most people imagined that the country
would become full of addicts, but that did not happen. Drug usage
actually dropped and addiction fell by 50%. It is no longer a crime or
taboo to seek out the authorities to ask for help. Usage amongst
children and teens is down 75%.

The British have had a system of
heroin maintenance since the 1920s. It was de-emphasised somewhat
during the 1960-1920s as a result of the US led “War on Drugs.”
However, in recent years the British are again moving toward heroin
maintenance as a legitimate component of their National Health Service.
This is because evidence is clear that methadone is not the answer for
all opioid addicts and that heroin is a viable maintenance drug which
has shown equal or better rates of success in terms of assisting
long-term users establish stable, crime-free lives.

Germany
conducted a major study on heroin maintenance from 2002 until 2005 with
over 1000 long-term heroin addicts receiving oral methadone or i.v.
diamorphine at treatment centers in seven participating cities. The
study proved diamorphine to be significantly more effective than
methadone in keeping patients in treatment and in improving their health
and social situations. Many participants were able to find employment.
Some even started a family after years of homelessness and
delinquency. Since then, treatment had been continued in the cities
that participated in the pilot study, until heroin maintenance was
permanently included in the national health insurance programmeme.

While
most European Union countries have not completely decriminalised drugs,
the movement is in that direction. In November 1990, the EU ratified
The Frankfurt Resolution, which reads:

“Drug using is for the
majority of users a temporary part of their biography, which can be
overcome within the process of maturing out of addiction. Drug policy
may not render this process more difficult, but it must support this
process… A drug policy fighting against addiction exclusively with the
criminal law and the compulsion to abstinence and offering abstinence
only has failed… Criminalisation is a counterpart to drug aid and drug
therapy and is a burden for police and justice they cannot carry… The
aid for drug users must no longer be threatened by criminal law… it is
necessary to lay stress on harm reduction and repressive forms of
intervention must be reduced to the absolute necessary minimum.”

The Resolution suggested that Europe enact legislation decriminalising
the purchase, possession, and consumption of marijuana and other drugs,
and support the controlled legal drug trade. This led countries to
examine alternatives to penal sanctions, specifically imprisonment, and
treat violations of drug laws as civil offences.

For centuries,
China had horrible opium problems. Mao solved them. He killed the
addicts. Singapore and even Saudi Arabia have drug problems and they
are very repressive societies. Singapore and China embrace similar
values and assumptions that drug problems stem from individual
shortcomings and failings which can only be corrected through compelled
participation in strict and regimented programmes which have as their
goal the reform of the deviant. Policies adopted by both countries do
not appear to be particularly effective, as over recent years there has
been increasingly severe consequence for those who use illicit drugs.
Once an individual is identified as a user of illicit drugs, he or she
is likely to experience a hierarchy of increasingly punitive measures
and longer periods of enforced detention if further drug use is
detected. These measures include corporal punishment. Even with the
increasingly severe punishment, drug usage continues to explode in
China. Data on drug abuse in Saudi Arabia is particularly scarce;
however, we know that amphetamine usage has skyrocketed. Drug addicts
are considered ill and treatment, rehabilitation and monitoring are the
usual steps taken by the government. However, the Kingdom puts drug
traffickers to death by public beheading and the authorities regularly
report several executions per month of Asian and African nationals for
drug smuggling convictions.

What to do with your children? First
understand, it is easier for a child to get drugs than it is cigarettes
and alcohol. So, you must start education early in your children’s
lives. Bring them to meet addicts that can tell them about the horrors
of addiction. Support local and state programmemes. Shame drug usage –
just like we did with smoking.

Drugs are a national security
issue. Mexico doesn’t have a drug problem. It has a drug money
problem. The drug market is said to be worth 75 billion dollars a year.
We are asking them (and other countries) to fight our drug war and
they haven’t had any success. Those of you concerned about illegal
immigration, think about how many Mexicans flee because of the drug war
that Mexico is fighting as our proxy. How many more come here to sell
drugs to our users?

Obviously, we cannot overlook Afghanistan. The US demands a
disproportionate amount of opiates and Afghanistan cultivates the
largest poppy crops in the world. We are funding Al Qaeda and the
Taliban. US drug demand has caused further instability in an unstable
region of the world.

Oh, and for you environmentalists, you can
produce 5 times as much hemp pulp per acre as you can with one acre of
trees. Hemp takes 8-9 months to grow. Trees take decades.

We
can either live in a free society or a drug free society. We can’t have
both.

UPDATE:

1/3rd of all inmates are in prison for drug offences. In the
Netherlands, where sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll are all legal, the Dutch
justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut
1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many
cells
empty.